Month: March 2010

Fashawn’s a storyteller. His debut album Boy Meets World feels more like a novel than an album.

It’s cool how Fashawn brings you into his world to show you what he’s all about. Fashawn is expressing something real that most people can relate to. He communicates struggle in his music as well as anyone. He communicates optimism and hope in his music as well as anyone. After a few listens, you’ll feel like you know Fashawn as a person, not as an artist.

Boy Meets World is one of those albums you can play all the way through and enjoy each track. Every song is quality. There is no garbage on this album.

If you’re looking for hip hop with a relaxed feel to chill out to, this is it. There aren’t any tracks that feel like the next big hit, because that doesn’t seem to be what the album is about. It’s more of an expression of Fashawn’s journey from Fresno on up. I love the vibe to Samsonite Man. I can feel his young, naïve energy on this track, and I can definitely relate to that. This is genuine shit, so if you think hip hop sucks because it’s too superficial and everything, give this a play.

When I’m working and doing the daily routines, Fashawn is the perfect accompaniment. His music doesn’t have to consume you, it’s great to have playing all the time in the background. His album just makes you feel good.

So people have been wondering what I’ve been doing with my time since last semester. This post is spilling the beans to WIBUTWML (what I’ve been up to with my life).

Lately, my friends have been asking me “why haven’t I seen you out lately” or “who do you hang out with now”. I’ve been answering these questions vaguely with “I’ve been working and stuff and shit…”. Sometimes I’ll say I got homework to do. I just get funny looks, “it’s Friday Drew, get a life…”. These excuses have all been code for I’m working on the sickest idea ever.

Here’s a summary on how a little idea has turned into a site we’ve been building:

Eric and I go back to 5th grade. We grew up in Olympia, Washington, which is one hour south of Seattle. As kids, we gamed Nintendo 64 like mad, and played a bunch of tennis together. We’re basically BFFs (omg!!!). So after high school, Eric attended the University of Texas at Dallas and I went to the University of San Francisco. Eric got a full ride to UTD for his grades and tennis, and since it’s a good engineering school, he couldn’t pass that deal up (this is a different school than the big famous UT school). I wanted to get out of Washington and go to a real urban college, and USF gave me some scholarship money so I made my way to the Bay.

During the summer of 2009, we were both back home in Olympia. Eric came up with the basic idea, and wanted me to help him work on it. We casually messed around with building the site. During the summer, Eric got his coding skills amped up and I picked up graphic design through playing with the Adobe platform.

In fall 2009, we decided to both put everything we had into the site. The trickiest part was staying in on weekends and telling our friends we were “busy”, which meant we were geekin out on our computers the whole weekend. Eric would code his ass off. I’d mess with design, research venture capital, and cheer Eric on over chat. We made a pact to stay in because we knew there was a ton of potential in this idea. It became our duty to build a tool to help everyone socialize, in real. With a lot of time over winter break, we are now close to getting a version of the site out.

So here were are at the beginning of March. I’m not going to say how close we are, but we are slowly making progress, which is good. I’ll definitely keep everyone updated on when the site comes out. Hope this post answers to everyone WIBUTL ( what I’ve been up to lately)